When the sun is up and breakfast has settled, it is time for a date with the fish. The crystal water looks shallow when viewed from a rock; dive in and suddenly a world of blue depth opens. The shallowness is just an illusion of perfect clarity.

Among the rocky reef, green-and-blue-marbled ornate wrasses bustle like costumed dancers going to a samba carnival, while scorpion fishes stealthily hang onto the undersides of rock, blending into the shadows. Diving into a submerged cave, tarantula-like Sally Lightfoot crabs scuttle away between the boulders on long, yellow-striped legs. And in the sandy beach bottom, a flounder is completing the camouflage-transition to invisibility.

Floating among the shoals of little deep blue fish I cannot quite decide which kind of life would be better: the zestful, endless ocean exploration of sardines or the quiet, world-observing meditation of the starfish. In the end, which is preferred? To truly be content with simple and less; or to spend one’s life exploring and chasing dreams?

(Agios Pavlos, Crete, Greece; August 2014)